How do you write a home inspection report clients read?

Before style comes the rule. Every standard of practice sets a minimum for what the written report contains, and a report that reads well but misses one is still short.

Many states write their own standard, and some adopt ASHI's. See home inspection standards of practice for the national texts, and your state page, such as Oregon or Maryland, for the license rules.

A client opens the report with one question: what do I need to worry about? Russ Motyko's advice is to answer it on the first screen. Put a summary of safety hazards, major defects, and items that need a specialist ahead of the system-by-system detail.

Inside each system, order findings by severity, not by the route walked through the house. The cracked flue liner goes before the sticking door. Readers assume the first item matters most, so make that true.

Too many severity labels blur together, and too few give no guidance. Three work for most houses: safety hazards, major defects, and maintenance items. What matters more than the number is consistency. If a double-tapped breaker is a safety item in one report and a note in the next, agents stop trusting the labels. Write the rule for each group once and apply it every time.

A finding can be correct and useless at once. Compare these two versions of the same observation.

The second one says what was seen, why it matters, and who to call. A quick test: read the comment out loud. If those are not words anyone would say in conversation, rewrite them.

"Observed" and "noted" are not endings. Each finding closes with a recommendation and, where it fits, the trade:

• Recommend evaluation by a licensed electrician.
• Recommend repair by a qualified roofing contractor.
• Recommend servicing by a licensed HVAC technician.

This is also where ASHI and Oregon put a recommendation in the rule. A finding with no recommendation leaves it unclear whether the inspector thought it mattered. One that names the next step shows the concern was found, told to the client, and sent to the right person. For the parts of a full finding as the NHIE tests them, see the free lesson what is a deficiency statement.

A photo with no comment shows the inspector was there, not what the inspector saw. Every photo gets a sentence about what the client is looking at.

Photograph the good areas too. The ASHI Standard (3.1.B) already has the report describe the methods used to inspect crawlspaces and attics. A photo of a dry crawlspace with an intact vapor barrier backs that up. With a thermal image, say in the comment that the camera shows surface temperature, not moisture, and give the moisture meter reading that confirmed it.

• Reflexive hedging. "May indicate" and "appeared to possibly be" blur a finding. State what was observed. When the cause or extent is unknown, say that and recommend evaluation.
• Unedited boilerplate. A canned comment that does not match the photo or the walkthrough contradicts the inspector's own record.

The fix for both is a comment library: a saved set of clear, plain-language findings that gets better every time a comment is reworded. Each comment still gets edited for the house at hand. For tools that hold one, see what software inspectors use for reports. For saying the same findings out loud, see how to explain findings without scaring clients.